a physician looks at medicine, religion, politics, pets, & passion in life

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

Dean Esmay sobers up: and writes a very enlightening piece on the progression of alcoholism: Alcoholism Progression

Protecting your credit and identity: Been dinged a few times with fraudulent credit card charges, so it’s tempting to hire one of those credit & ID theft protection companies. Turns out you can easily do everything they do, for a lot less money: Never Pay Someone to Protect Your Identity. A credit lock is also cheap, easy, and reversible — not to mention a good safeguard against impulsive credit by you: Credit Security Freezes

Dr. Discontented: Man, can I relate — my profession is being exsanguinated by a thousand cuts, and its a full-time effort to keep focused on the goal of caring for patients. Lots of docs are retiring early, lots more restricting their practices or doing more boutique services. Look for a significant access problem in the near future. Eyes Bloodshot, Doctors Vent Their Discontent

Open-source health care: Interesting take from a Linux guy on shifting the control center to the patient. Mixed bag, from where I see it, with huge issues of privacy, data security, access control (who gets to see/edit your medical data?), etc. The Patient as the Platform (HT: John Ballard)